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Fannie Gadouas

Fannie Gadouas is an artist originally from a very small, religious and conservative community outside of Ottawa. Unsatisfied with this constrictive environment, she spent a few years moving around before settling down in Montreal. Gadouas is an interdisciplinary artist working with photography, fiber arts and performance. Her work explores issues pertaining to feminine identity and experience. By re-appropriating various traditional imagery, techniques and rituals, she questions and challenges the way gendered identity is constructed, inherited and perceived in western society. Informed and greatly influenced by feminist theory, the work Fannie Gadouas produces is a critical response to the social structure of western society.

What do you hope to accomplish during the residency?

As a cisgendered, twenty one year old, mostly heterosexual, white, able bodied, educated, middle class women living in Montreal, I consider myself quite privileged in terms of the oppression I might experience on a daily basis. Having said all of this, a million questions pop into my head! Why is feminism still relevant in my life? Why do I feel an urge to fight a system which claims to have reached gender equality? Why do I feel like my body is being controlled by politics and more importantly what kind of feminism do I want and need?

During the FAC residency program, I intend to research and draft a small publication. My goal is to create a visually appealing and accessible booklet/zine which will operate as a personal manifesto. This zine will consider what I am, and am not, as both carnal and conscious being. My writing will be supported by passages from the works of various established critical thinkers. The booklet will also serve as a “reading list” or reference for those wanting more. Often unsatisfied by the inability to communicate clear political ideas in my artistic practice, this project is an attempt to increase the accessibility of concepts surrounding oppression and the ways it functions in our western, patriarchal, capitalist society.